A buddy of mine at Tulane attempted to get into astronaut training. Mechanical engineering degree from Tulane, Master's from Vandy, Doctorate from Oxford. Totally ripped, in great physical shape, collegiate athlete. Not too tall (often they need shorter folks due to size limitations in spacecraft). Perfect or better-than-perfect vision. He was not accepted. That's when I realized how rare the folks who are chosen for the space program are.

(in case you wondered, he's now CEO and founder of a very successful IoT company so he's doing alright. )

A buddy of mine at Tulane attempted to get into astronaut training. Mechanical engineering degree from Tulane, Master's from Vandy, Doctorate from Oxford. Totally ripped, in great physical shape, collegiate athlete. Not too tall (often they need shorter folks due to size limitations in spacecraft). Perfect or better-than-perfect vision. He was not accepted. That's when I realized how rare the folks who are chosen for the space program are.

(in case you wondered, he's now CEO and founder of a very successful IoT company so he's doing alright. )

Honestly, it’s surprising he didn’t make the screen, especially since by your day mission specialists opened up a whole other path to selection. That may have been the case why your buddy did not make it: loaded resume but not a true master in something unusual. I was a child of the Gemini and Apollo programs. My elementary school teachers got sick of me talking about it—every school project, paper or assignment I tied back to the space race. The night of the moon landing I did not sleep a wink. In those times the ONLY ascension path for NASA was military pilot. When I learned at age 15 that I slipped below 20/20 vision, I was crushed. No back seaters allowed.

So I became an aquanaut instead. Still was beating the Soviets, though.